Profile an Android application

Overview Before you begin Configure your device Connect Streamline to your device Choose a counter template Capture a profile Analyze your capture Disconnect Streamline from your target Next steps
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Connect Streamline to your device

Arm provides a Python script, gator_me.py that installs a daemon, gatord, on your device. Streamline uses this daemon to connect to unrooted Android devices and collect data. Follow these steps to run the script so that Streamline can communicate with your device.

  1. On your host machine, navigate to the Streamline installation directory, <install_dir>/streamline/gator/ where you will find the gator_me.py script.
  2. Run the gator_me.py script with the --daemon option, to supply the path to the gatord binary that will be installed on the device. For example: 
    python3 gator_me.py --daemon <install_dir>/streamline/bin/arm64/gatord

    There are two versions of the gatord, for 32-bit or 64-bit architectures, located in the following directories:
    • <install_dir>/streamline/bin/arm64/ for Armv8 64-bit architectures.
    • <install_dir>/streamline/bin/arm/ for 32-bit architectures.
  3. The script will return a numbered list of the Android package names for the debuggable applications that are installed on your device. Enter the number of the package you want to profile.

    The gator_me.py script does the following:
    • Kills and removes gatord and removes any counter configuration file that was previously created.
    • Enables perf profiling.
    • Copies gatord to the target.
    • Runs gatord inside the Android application sandbox.
    • Configures port forwarding.
    • Waits for you to configure and perform the capture in Streamline.
    • When the capture is complete, it kills and removes gatord.

    Alternatively, if you know the Android package name of the app you want to profile you can specify it when running the script, using the --package option.

    python3 gator_me.py --package com.mycompany.myapp --daemon <install_dir>/streamline/bin/arm64/gatord
  4. Launch Streamline:
    1. On Windows, from the Start menu, navigate to the Arm Mobile Studio folder, and select the Streamline shortcut.
    2. On macOS, go to the <install_dir>/streamline folder, and double-click the Streamline.app file.
    3. On Linux, go to the <install_dir>/streamline folder, and run the Streamline file:
      cd <install_dir>/streamline
       ./Streamline
  5. Choose the Target tab, and enter localhost:8080 in the target name field. This value is the local TCP port that is specified in the gator_me.py script:

    Streamline target tab
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